Since the horrors in the well-constructed Australian film “Jindabyne” happen so early, the movie’s remaining revelations build slowly into a set of surprisingly powerful emotional beats.

As in similar atmospheric films such as “A Passage to India” or “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “Jindabyne” understands that a shocking incident may not be as interesting as the subsequent shock waves disrupting characters’ relationships.

The great short-story writer Raymond Carver understood this too, which is why filmmakers keep basing their plots on his tales. “Jindabyne” comes from Carver’s “So Much Water So Close to Home,” as did a key portion of Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts.” Something big and bad happens at the start, yes, but the fascination is in watching people try to explain it to others – and themselves.

Director Ray Lawrence put atmosphere and intrigue into another fine Australian movie, “Lantana,” a few years back. Here he starts with a scene straight out of the Aussie horror film “Wolf Creek”: A racist white bushman abducts a beautiful young woman of aboriginal descent, then dumps her violated body into a distant creek.

Back in the town of Jindabyne, other hints of disturbance: Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and Claire (Laura Linney) dote on a young son, yet avoid going too deep into other topics, including the fact that Claire got sick and left the family for more than a year after their son was born. Little Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss) has other issues – he’s afraid of the water, looming right outside their home in a big reservoir, and his best friend is a troubled girl eccentrically grieving the death of her mother.

In fact, death is everywhere in Jindabyne, though it takes a while for us to notice the accumulation of story points and visual metaphors employed by Lawrence. Jindabyne itself died, drowned under the reservoir; the present town is a relocation, an artificial construction.

Just as a loaded gun in Act 1 will go off by Act 3, that corpse must reappear. It does, with Stewart and three buddies off on a fishing trip. They find the dead woman, express sorrow, then – inexplicably, tragically, irrevocably – go on fishing near the body, agreeing not to report it until the end of their weekend retreat.

The rest of “Jindabyne” deals with that fateful decision, but of course there’s so much more to explore. Claire is furious at Stewart, but he harbors plenty of resentment of his own from that long- ago abandonment. The community’s aboriginal families are seething – when is forgiveness a weakness? Must contrition be accepted?

On the strength of Linney and Byrne, terrific actors who always show up in full for their roles, “Jindabyne” rides those currents and shock waves. It’s a taste of Australia, and, more important, a taste of what it means to be human.

Michael Booth was a health care & health policy writer at The Denver Post before departing in 2013. He started his journalism career as an assistant foreign editor at The Washington Post before moving with family to Denver and taking a brief stint with the Denver Business Journal. During a 25-year career at The Post, he covered city and state politics, droughts, entertainment and wrote Sunday takeouts, and was part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for breaking news coverage.

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